Clocks have gone backward

I grossly dislike the last weekend of October when dusk sets in an hour earlier than on the day before. The hammer of darkness does not bring me down, but I would definitely prefer to enjoy more daylight in the afternoon than in the morning.

The Daylight Saving Time came first into effect during WW1. I once heard its purpose was to misguide the enemy, but I have not come across evidence to underpin it. Since then it has been broadly used in most developed countries. Currently 34% of world's population shift the clocks twice a year. Bear in mind the “winter” time is a basic time zone, while the "summer" time is the departure giving benefit of longer evenings from April to October and diminishing effect of useless sunlight when most people are still asleep over that period.

One must note since introducing the DST daily routines have changed. This is vividly noticeable in Poland, where people in mass no longer wake up at the crack of dawn to knock on the first shift which ends in the middle of the afternoon. A far more prevalent work kick-off time is 9:00 a.m., but instead of knocking off at 3:00 p.m. or 4:00 p.m., white-collar workers do overtime in evenings. Early morning daylight hance makes little sense.

I am not in favour of moving the clock back and forth twice a year, but this nuisance is preferable to me to staying in winter time all year round and being deprived of long spring and summer evenings. Benefits and costs have been reasonably well-investigated and the latter apparently outweigh the former, but this is insufficient to bureaucrats in Brussels. The process of attempting to scrap the clock shifting within the EU is one of miserable proofs how the EU is paralysed by over-regulation.

Currently EU countries lie in three time zones and given differences in latitudes between the two edges of the continent, Europe will still need to be divided into three zones, but with different boundaries between them. Warsaw and Madrid, around one sun-hour and forty sun-minutes apart should not lie in the same time zone. Time to come to terms with it and let each country choose which time zone suits them best. Majority of Poles posit Poland should run in DST all year round and I hold the same view.